A few days before the release of Stellar Blade on PlayStation 5, the developers patched the game to remove a tag with racist connotations.
“ The embargo on Stellar Blade is now lifted so I can show you the 'Hard R Shop' graffiti. I wonder how long it will take to make it disappear? », indicates content creator Lance McDonald, in a tweet published on April 24. This is in fact already the case, let it be known Kokaku in an article. When we return to the location shown by Lance McDonald, the word “Hard” is replaced by “Crime”, which no longer creates the association “Hard R” – an expression with racist connotations.
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In the columns of IGNSony, publisher of Stellar Bladehas explained : “ The placement of two graphic elements next to each other in Stellar Blade led to an unintentional abject phrase. Shift Up never intended to create offensive artwork and will replace graffiti for the launch patch “. Players should therefore never see “Hard R” in Stellar Bladeavailable from April 26 on PlayStation 5.
What's the problem with “Hard R” in Stellar Blade?
At first glance, “Hard R” does not evoke much racism, when one does not know the history of racist struggles in the United States. On this long thread signed by the observer Kamiwe can see that many Internet users do not understand the debate.
In the United States, “Hard R” is slang related to the insult “nigger”. The “Hard R” refers to the last letter of the word, pronounced in an accented manner, to differentiate it from the “Soft A” version, for “nigga”.
“ 'A' is the one who wears jewelry and becomes rich. 'R' is the one who wears chains and obeys his master'. That's what a black person once said to me. », testifies a user of Reddit anonymous to try to explain the difference. Of course, depending on the context, the N-Word, regardless of its spelling, remains an insult. But “Hard R” leaves no room for doubt.
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Did Shift Up do it on purpose? Sony says no. We are talking here about a Korean studio which certainly should not experience the problem that “Hard R” can cause, especially placed next to the word “shop”. It could therefore be a pure coincidence, with a generic tag (Hard) placed next to a letter which is linked to the first name of a character running a shop (Roxanne). Finally, we can note that Shift Up has already done what is necessary to clean Stellar Bladewhich on the other hand remains a monster of sexism.
